The True History of Chocolate by Sophie and Micheal D Coe pages 203-266

The last few chapters that I have read were about the reason on why chocolate existed and the unreason. People could not remember the ancient regimes of the 18 century Europe without remembering what happened in1789 to France. For some reason, European and the North American populations were going at a rapid rate. It was not well understood, and while this entire people were poor some of them were not. Because of that, they saw a rapid rise in “consumerism”, number of small manufactures turning out vast quantities of goods, and also textiles for the houses. One of the reasons why everything was improving was because they had advance technology. It didn’t help the poors it only made the rich richer, and the poor poorer. One thing that the poor people enjoyed was pastry and sweets. Chocolate was one of their favorite. For at 28 centuries, chocolate had been a drink of the elite and rich. By the mid 20th century after Kerouac climbed the California mountain, chocolate had been transmuted into a solid food of the masses available everywhere. Van Houten’s wanted a breakthrough, so he decided to mix a blend of cocoa powder and sugar with melted cacao butter and warm water. The result of the chocolate bars was amazing, and this was how the first world’s first true eating chocolate.
“perhaps some day the world of premier chocolate making will return to the rich, delicious, concoction that gave so much pleasure to their lives” (Coe 266).
I agree with this statement because I feel like chocolate is not original anymore. Especially in this time of age, they add more sugar and milk and a little bit of cacao. That is why I feel that the only nation that is supposed to make chocolate is where it came from. It was the first recipe to a chocolate bar, why not just have one recipe rather than a hundred recipes.

The True History of Chocolate by Sophie and Micheal. D Coe page 115-203

The few chapters I read were about the crossing language barrier, crossing Medical barrier, and also the way chocolate conquered Europe. In the language barrier, military adventurers brought down the Aztec Empire, they’ve been able to deal with the terrifying Aztec military machine. They had to deal with whether to construct a new capital on the leftovers that once belonged to Tenochtitlan and maybe harnessing native labor on the newly founded land in New Spain. This was a very limited country; it was a kind of mix way of life took form. They had new words such as “Nahuatl” which stood for plants, animals, and even for previous dishes. Matching the creolization of the drink itself, chocolate’s preparation and consumption went through the same process of linguistic hybridization. After they undergone linguistic transformation, Spaniards were not discriminate anymore. In the medical barrier the European medical practice was the theory of disease and nutrition. It was originated by the classical Greeks and not to be put out in the west until the start of modern medicine and physiology in the first half of the 19 century. While cacao and chocolate had been discovered by Europeans of the renaissance, it was during the Baroque age that the beverage made its most successful journeys. It was in Baroque palaces and mansions of the wealthy and powerful that it was elaborated and consumed.
Gresham’s law states that “bad money drives out good.” (Coe 202)
One of the reason I like this quote is because it doesn’t only applies to chocolate or the books. It applies to everyone and especially the ones that let money control their thoughts and drives away the real personalities.

The True History of Chocolate by Sophie D. Coe and Micheal D.Coe pages 67-115

The following chapter is about the formation of the cacao and how it used to be useful to the Aztec. In the book Coe explains to us how there are many ways of making cacao into a beverage. They used substances such as sugar cane, rice, cinnamon, and black pepper that were introduced by the Spaniards. The most common drink that was made by the Spaniards was called Batido. There is still controversy on the subject among hieroglyph specialists, some of the classic Maya pottery texts suggest that the fresh beans and their pulp were exploited in some ways. Most books conclude by restating that chocolate and the remarkable tree from which it derives were thus not the invention of the Aztecs but base on what the Maya believes, the Mixe- Zoquean speaking Olmec.The Maya were the first who thaught the old world how to drink chocolate, and it was them who gave us the word "cacao". In times, the Spaniards for instance found themselves consuming less wheat and more maize, or absorbing "Nahuatl" words for local plants and animals into their own language. The poorest Spaniards married native women, while the wealthiest ones took them "concubines", so in Colonial Mexico the housewife was an Aztec. A new generation of Aztec was forming, it was the context in which chocolate was taken into the Colonial cuisine of New Spain and was eventually transplanted to Old Spain and the rest of Europe.
"Mesoamerican housewife never cooked with oils and fats. To make matters worse, cheese was totally absent from the native table (in fact they didn't even have tables). (Coe 110)
During their period the housewive were not able to cook with fats or oil and but why couldn't they cook with things that were fat and things that had oils in it?

The True History of Chocolate by Sophie and Michael D. Coe pages 35-67

Many people believed that chocolate was first discovered in Germany but in reality chocolate was first discovered by the Olmec. They were the first one that appreciated chocolate; they began cultivating cacao around 1500 BC. Although some people could not read some of the Olmec writings they assumed by the little writing that they could read that the secrets or the recipe to make chocolate was hidden in the symbols. The only ingredient they knew that chocolate had was cacao. During 1400 BC - 400 BC, the first civilization of the Americas, the Olmec of Mexico used cacao for chocolate drinks. It was highly regarded, a drink for the elite only. The word cacao, originally pronounced kakawa was reconstructed by linguists as a vocabulary item in proto Mixe-Zoquean family of languages, by about 1000 BC, at the very height of Olmec civilization. Before the ancestors of the classic Maya entered the Peten lower lands of northern Guatemala, cacao was only known as an exotic import. If they used it, they must have another name for it because cacao didn’t receive the word “cacao” until 400 BC and AD 100. to the Mixe-Zoquean speakers cacao meant domesticated Theobroma cacao. They donated the word and also they donated the substance as well.
"A work of great poetic beauty, it opens majestically with the creation of the cosmos and ends with the conquest and the oposition of Spanish rule" (Coe 41)
The writing of the Izapans were considered to be a beauty for the classic Maya. The Quiche Maya took this quote from the book of Counsel to show the transcription from a now-lost hieroglyphic original.